V. I. Lenin

Review.{1}I. M. Kozminykh-Lanin.Overtime at Factories and Plants in Moscow Gubernia

Moscow, 1914. Price 1.00 ruble.

Published:ProsveshcheniyeNo. 5, May 1914.

      Printed from theProsveshcheniyetext.

      Signed:I. V..Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1977,

      Moscow,Volume 41,

      pages331.2-334.1.Translated:Yuri SdobnikovTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marxists.org)
      © 2004

      Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the
      terms of theGNU Free Documentation License.

Therecently published new statistical pamphlet by
Mr. Kozminykh-Lanin examines the question of overtime, which is of
exceptional importance for the Russian workers.

Letus note that the statistical data given by Kozminykh Lanin relate
to the year of 1908 only and apply exclusively to workers of Moscow
Gubernia. Moreover, the 1908 figures must now be largely out of date,
especially in view of the fact that 1908 was a year of industrial
stagnation, and that it was followed by a year of industrial upswing, and a
parallel and intensified demand for manpower. This,for its part, was bound to lead to greater use of overtime in a number of
industries.

Thedata given by Kozminykh-Lanin (a factory inspector in Moscow
Gubernia) are undoubtedly of a semi-official character, they were collected
through an inquiry among the employers, so that they should be taken with a
grain of salt but must none the less be given the most serious
attention. For one thing, the literature on the question is so scarce in
Russia that every work must be made use of, quite apart from the fact that
even these semi-official statistics yield a great deal that is highly
interesting.

Mr. Kozminykh-Lanincarried out his inquiry among a total of 112,380
workers in 152 enterprises of Moscow Gubernia, mainly large-scale ones,
with the textile industry being prevalent in the inquiry.

Thefigures given in the pamphlet indicate that overtime is not widely
practised in the textile industry of the Moscow area. Thus, of the 59,000
workers engaged in the processing of cotton, covered by the inquiry, only
767 did overtime on holidays. Considerably greater numbers did overtime on
weekdays (1,717), but even there the figure fluctuates between 1 and
2 per cent of the total. That is understandable, because technical
requirements in the textile industry are such that at every given moment
there must be a definite number of hands specified more or less in advance;
and the main thing is that 1908 was less than favourable for the textile
industry. Employers were frequently concerned in cutting back production,
rather than in increasing the productivity of their enterprises through
overtime.

Themetalworking industry, another leading branch, presents a different
picture. There overtime is widely practised, sometimes involving up to 20
per cent of the total number of workers.

Asfor the duration of overtime, according to Kozminykh-Lanin’s data,
it generally fluctuates both for metalworkers and textile workers between
25 and 35 hours per worker doing overtime (counting work on both weekdays
and holidays). This is a very high figure. The 30 hours of free time on
average taken up by overtime earning naturally add up entirely to so much
harm done to the worker’s cultural and mental development.

Letus see what workers are paid for the plunder of their labour in
terms of brains, muscles and nerves.... Mr. Kozminykh-Lanin gives a very
detailed calculation of the per-hour remuneration of workers for overtime
in the several branches. We find that this work earns textile workers an
average of only 15-16 kopeks an hour, rarely more than that. These rates
are slightly increased towards April and September, and then decline again
to 13 kopeks in December-February. The earnings are especially small at
wool-weaving mills; thus, the average per-hour wage for March came to only
6.75 kopeks for Sunday and holiday work. If those are overtime rates, how
low the ordinary ones must be!

Thetables show that the labour of metalworkers is not much better paid
than that of textile workers; the average per-hour overtime earnings
fluctuate from 13 to 20 kopeks. In general, the level and change of rates
for the overtime work of Moscow metalworkers clearly show that the working
conditions there are highly unfavourable even in comparison with, say,
St. Petersburg.

Thus,average monthly earnings for overtime were:

Letus emphasise in conclusion that Mr. Kozminykh-Lanin’s inquiry dealt
little, if at all, with the main sphere of overtime—small-scale industry
(only 1.45 per cent of the workers covered by the inquiry were engaged in
under takings employing less than 100 persons). Yet, we feelsure that the examination of working conditions in small-scale industry
would have produced some astounding results.

{1}The statistical studies by I. M. Kozminykh-Lanin repeatedly drew
Lenin’s attention. In August 1912, Lenin wrote two reviews on hisWorking Day and Working Year in Moscow Gubernia, entitled “The
Working Day in the Factories of Moscow Gubernia” and “The Working Day and
Working Year in Moscow Gubernia”. The first was published inPravda, the second inNevskaya Zvezdain August 1912

(see present edition, Vol. 18, pp. 260–61, 262-69).

Lenin used the author’s statistical data in his article “The Language of
Figures”, published in September 1913 in the Moscow newspaperNash
Put(see present edition, Vol. 19, pp. 358–63).

In the first of the above-mentioned reviews Lenin wrote that the
statistician had prepared a special work on overtime at Moscow Gubernia
factories, and the article given here is a review of this latter work,
which was published in 1914.

p. 331